


osteology for the surviving

by bee_bro



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: 5+1 but the author is Not good at counting, :) learning how to process love, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Gen, Not A Game AU, benrey-centric ft some kind of a redemption arc, hence the warning, mostly in relation to gunfire as per canon, tldr: inhuman benrey getting slapped by gaining human emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28006911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Benrey thinks he is a creature of survival, but that's before he meets the concept of love.or: 5 times benrey thought he had love figured out and 1 where he just decided to wing it.
Comments: 30
Kudos: 131





	osteology for the surviving

**Author's Note:**

> well hello hello! i got nerfed by the common cold and wrote most of this in delirious desperation, whadya know
> 
> here's some cw's because better safe than sorry  
> warnings for the sections as labeled by numbers:  
> 1 - canon typical gunfire  
> 3 - mention of injury for side characters  
> 4 - canon typical gunfire  
> 5 - the void / benrey-typical death (its ok he gets better)

1

The first love that Benrey knows is something so deeply rooted in his chest, it might as well be what builds his ribs. He knows it before he knows himself, before he knows language that isn’t color and light, before he knows identity and before he is Benrey. It is the love of first breath and first meal, scuttling the shadows of a predator’s world: it is the love for surviving.

He does not love Xen itself. Not like one might love their childhood home, but he loves what it entails, loves eating after days of hunger, hunting once he grows stronger, no longer scavenging what he can. Loves growing teeth before his competition learns how to. Loves the chase of it, be he running _from_ or _after._

He will barely remember this. His brain isn’t the same yet and his eyes see the world differently, so, years later, when he has five fingers, opposable thumbs, a face, and the semblance of human thought, he will not process these memories enough to comprehend them. Running kid-pix files on photoshop. Making a windows laptop play cassettes.

He won’t remember the taste of ground and roots and then of blood, the kind that isn’t human or his own, won’t remember that kind of fight to the top and the love of making it another day, another meal, another few minutes on the wretched eat-or-be-eaten scape of Xen, but it will stay with him. It will stay with him somewhere in the back of his head, somewhere behind his human, front-facing eyes. The love for sidestepping death and biting back. And when the turret fire turns on him, he will feel it all over again, a burning through his veins that haven’t always followed bipedal, human patterns. He will catch the bullets in his flesh. He hasn’t spent years gaming evolution and mining for hit points to not stare his human acquaintance in the face and take direct bullet fire to the chest.

Because while he loves the fun of survival, Benrey loves a good joke, and the momentary spring of blood in his mouth is worth the wide range of flickering emotions that race across Gordon’s face. He can heal, this is nothing. This can’t kill him. It’s worth a good laugh. 

2

Benrey loves jokes. Benrey’s first joke, he does not remember. Benrey’s memory isn’t the best, but he knows it was on-guard in the halls, standing unmoving and boring holes into the wall with a blank gaze, brain switched off with the knowledge he’s got two more hours on-shift. Tommy had broken into his line of sight with color and an offered juice packet, lab coat stinking of chemical smoke and nicotine patches. He’d told Benrey a joke. Benrey had never laughed before then but he’d known what it was supposed to sound like. Tommy never seemed bothered with the poor excuse at simulated human glee, just that tad bit off, just that tad bit over-pronounced and strangely timed. But Benrey had laughed and had fallen in love with jokes.

It’d hitched his breath trying to use lungs he didn’t know too well yet, feeling them open to their full volume with the inhale, learning how much air they could hold, and if the love for sharp-edged survival was his ribs, this love for humor lived in his lungs.

Learning what made things funny was interesting. What made Jefferem regard him with the strongest cringe response, what made Tommy snort and hit him on the back, shaking his head as he tried to hold back snickering at yet another fast-whip of snide comment. Tommy said it made Benrey feel more real, more alive and not just a pale, stationary guard somewhere in hall. They ate lunch and Benrey learned language and how to use it for jokes and puns.

Not everyone found his jokes funny, but that was cause they didn’t _get it._ He’d spend hours laughing about his own words, lying in his bunk without the need for a conventional 8 hours of sleep, filing away the day’s events in an effort to better remember them. Not lose them to his dotty memory and to relentless time. Lying, staring at the dark ceiling and not having it impact his vision enough to matter, giggling at his own jokes from earlier. Getting shushed by his Roommate Of The Month. Benrey learned the love of partaking in conversation and talking and being talked to because it was all oh so funny.

It is in the six-foot jump down the elevator shaft to beat Gordon, cracking up laughing and hearing Gordon stammer at it from somewhere behind before joining in, mostly from surprise, it’s in teaming up with Bubby to curse the rest of the group with their worst takes, it’s in whispering, hidden in corners, putting their plan together, talking to the military-

Because that will be funny, Benrey tells himself. It makes sense for it to be funny. Like tricking a friend into eating a toothpaste oreo. He saw Darnold do that to Tommy once. It was funny. This will be funny too. Benrey loves funny things. This is what he tells himself, standing on one side of the doorway. Convincing Gordon to go inside.

But while it will be funny, hilarious even, there is another underlying reason for the scheme. For shaking Forzen’s hand and promising to bring Gordon to them. That other reason is the same, aforementioned, survival. If the military is satisfied, they can get Benrey out of here.

Five bullets to the chest no longer hurt him. He’s worked too hard for that to be of any consequence. But Black Mesa keeps him caged in. Keeps him from getting stronger and cutting ties to Xen, moving on to instead leach power off the world he now walks. He needs to get out of Black Mesa and drink the life and the power that the open skies and grass of Outside has to offer. That’s the next step of his evolution, his survival. His ribs and his lungs work in tandem when he tricks Gordon into the ambush, breathing his love for survival and his love for a good laugh into his blood.

3

Benrey lives in a Black Mesa issued room, residing on the bottom bunk and grabbing his roommate’s ankles in the night. This has, between the seven roommates he’s had in the span of a year, resulted in two broken wrists, a cracked rib, three dislocated shoulders, and a broken thumb. All from taking a rather graceless fall, down from the top bunk in the dark, mid-attempt to go to the bathroom, only to get their ankles snatched at by an unseen hand. It’d been funny.

Benrey has ex-roommates that hate him and Benrey has friends. Jefferem is what he’s been told is a “work friend” who lives in a dorm two floors away from Benrey’s.

Maybe that distance had let them keep a semblance of agreeable company, playing games much later then they should’ve, mixing mountain dew with root beer and choking it down for fun, shoving each other around because Jefferem found it hard to ration his strength and Benrey could take a slight knocking around, getting into shouting matches over nothing, sometimes letting those grow into genuine arguments because Jefferem took it too far and Benrey couldn’t live with being wrong, sometimes grabbing each other’s shirts and then Jefferem would teach Benrey how to kiss. It was always angry but fun, and never personal.

But he and Jefferem were _work friends_ and Jefferem had _real friends_ who didn’t know Benrey. Or didn’t like Benrey. So Benrey didn’t go to big Black Mesa events or boy’s nights out. Benrey never had a group. From the moment he took his first gill-filtered breath, he’d survived and then hunted alone. From the moment he put on the Black Mesa guard uniform and walked on two human legs, he worked and spent most evenings by himself.

Three pairs of arms hoist him out of the pit.

It’s a barrage of _Dude what the fuck-_ and _That’s the Radioactive Hole, young man!-_ and _Benrey, you could’ve gotten- gotten hurt!-_ as he’s lifted by the fabric of his vest and shirt. He’s berated and soon everyone moves on and, as Benrey follows in the very back, they will periodically glance over their shoulders to make sure he is still there. And when someone shouts _Don’t Mess With The Science Team!_ for the first time, he is included within that generalization.

Benrey is not a pack creature. This is a difficult development. He keeps getting lost. They keep getting separated. He finds it hard to think in terms of _we_ and not _I._ But, when the word _Team_ rings out, he understands that it encompasses him too, and it singes down his limbs with the network crawl of arteries: Benrey falls in love with _this._

He can’t say what _this_ is. Is it friends? A group? He doesn’t have a word for it, and the sooner the cave of Xen draws, the more he is aware that _this_ , whatever it may be that he loves, is infinitely finite. It will end in that room, either with all of their lives or his own.

But Benrey is in love. It burns through his body with how new the feeling is, how much more it captivates him than any other. While his ribs and lungs build him, _this_ love keeps him alive. Having inside jokes, formed in the span of seconds between the ring of gunfire or the stain of blood, of sleeping in one pile and trusting each other, one at a time, to keep watch- and even if Benrey doesn’t need to sleep that much, he will lie down and rest. It is strange to rest in safety.

It is another night and Tommy’s got his longass legs draped over Benrey’s middle, Coomer’s heavy, metal hand has ended up limp on Benrey’s shoulder for no reason as the old man sleeps, Bubby curled up like a taut spring into Coomer’s side. Benrey keeps his hand locked onto Tommy’s pantleg and the other one tracing tiles along the floor. Gordon’s on watch this hour and he sits with his back to the crew, watching the dark hallway.

Is he imagining something barreling at them from the darkness? Do his human eyes fall weak to the lack of light? Do they make up for it by imagining things? Seeing movement where there is none? Every few minutes Gordon will tense, readjust his weapon, hold his breath to listen. He’s fidgeting with his hair, nervous, hand shaky, and Benrey looks at the hallway again. He can see clearly, not at all stumped by the darkness: he can see it’s empty.

If Gordon gets too anxious, he won’t fall asleep once his shift’s done, and then he’ll be so much worse for wear tomorrow. Benrey’s had a long while to figure this out, notice it in the snappy, panicked responses Gordon will adopt after another restless night. So he reaches out. Setting his free hand on the floor by Gordon’s thigh where he can see it- Gordon flinches at first, startled, but recognizes the black nails and dotting of purple moles.

Benrey cannot see his face, but traces his eyes along the scuffs on Gordon’s suit, carved into the metal of it, scraping paint off and revealing white. Like scars.

“The hallway’s empty. I’ll tell you if anything moves.”

Tommy has blood dried into the core of his torn-up labcoat. Bubby’s covered in soot and his sleeves are shortened with burnt, blackened fabric. Coomer’s arms are scraped too, and there’s a blankness in his eyes that Bubby whispers to Benrey is scary. Is foreign. That he hopes it will go away once they’re all out.

_They’re all out…._

_All…_

_Does that include Benrey?_

Every step they take, _(They. Together.)_ the red cave lake of Xen draws closer.

Benrey only falls more in love. The team and being in it is becoming his veins.

4

Xen buzzes with life and adrenaline and Benrey remembers it down to his bones, but now he is tall and strong and he is above them all and he does not need to hide in shadows and survive the next headcrab, the next peeper puppy. Now he needs to survive his friends.

He lied. They are not his veins.

They are his blood.

And they make him bleed, make him fight for it, and he does not want to, all he wants to is follow what he loves: to survive, and now, this means surviving them- but he loves something else too, Benrey realizes, as he pulls his punches: he loves the team. Which he may or may not be a part of- but either way, he loves them. More than he knew he could love anything, anything that wasn’t abstract concepts, like making it to another day and being funny and laughing- he loves them. So he thrashes and threatens them, but, ultimately, he does not aim at them. He lets them shoot at him and at the passports.

He monologues and they try to listen but they do not understand. He thinks he speaks clearly but there is no recognition in Gordon’s eyes. Tommy still looks at him with hope, but equal confusion. Bubby’s eyes are invisible behind the glare of his glasses, and Coomer’s gaze is empty. Benrey pleads, but he cannot say he loves them. Would that have helped? Would that have deescalated the predicament of facing each other in battle? Could he have said, _I love you all so deeply and so painfully that I have not yet learned to understand it? I have never loved people the way I love you four, nor do I have a word to describe my love. Or words to somehow convey this in a way you will understand._

_I am afraid._

And when he is afraid he talks about video games and trivia and he can see them growing restless- he can feel his ribs aching, aching with the fact he will need to fight back because his survival instincts will override all else. Because he didn’t make it this far being sentimental.

The first love that Benrey knows, is something so deeply rooted in his chest, it might as well be what builds his ribs. He knows it before he knows himself, before he knows language that isn’t color and light, before he knows identity and before he becomes Benrey. It is the love of first breath and first meal, scuttling the shadows of a predator’s world, it is the love for clawing at the walls of a cave he used to hunt for Xen-born fish in, it is the love for making it through this hell and coming out on the other side- it is the love for surviving- except he hates it now. Because within his chest, where he cannot breathe, there is another battle: between his love for surviving and the love for those who are trying to kill him.

He swipes at Coomer, planning to miss, and he turns another cheek when his left cannot take more bullet fire. His form is falling apart. He loves them. He wants to end this all, wants to track back and find where it all went wrong, wants to meet them on good terms and go home with them- not Black Mesa dorms with a rotation of roommates who don’t learn his name- _home_ home, some abstract home somewhere outside, where there’s a sky and grass and normality, wants to spend days and days with them and laugh and joke- because they laugh _with_ him- as a group- as-

Oh.

Family.

Benrey sloshes in the red water that’s staining with his darker blood. There is so much noise. He cannot cry. He has not grown tear glands like that yet. Hasn’t needed to. But now there is only sun and summers and open air and holding hands and baking cookies and a cool breeze and so many new places on his mind… Benrey wants to cry but all he does it shout, swing, and nearly miss his fri- family. Benrey falls in doomed love with the idea of a future.

There is so much noise. Until there isn’t and Benrey is dead within the confines of a damning, isolating void.

5

It is like getting disconnected. Cords wrenched out, line dead, call the mortician. Benrey floats in it with no sense of direction, no sense of himself- he has no body. He has no ribs. No lungs. No blood. There is no survival here, how do you survive death? No sound. No one he knows. Almost no Benrey. There was a time before names and he is falling, falling back into its grasp, losing concepts and losing himself as it’s all torn away, chronologically, stripping him of memories he wasn’t even aware of-

Xen- hunting and running and forcing his bones to grow claws and better teeth- becoming taller and stronger- people- beginning to look like one- trial and error and still carrying damning characteristics of Other in his maw and his black nails that are not painted to be that color- his eyes. Tommy. Meeting Tommy and being faced with his first dose of baffling kindness. Jefferem. Games. A job, a uniform- he remembers _these_ memories now, these are awfully fresh- and he’s losing them- toothpaste oreo cookies- soda- lunch breaks and sandwiches and letting Coomer test his arms after an upgrade on Benrey’s pinnacle of evolution body for fun- reforming his ribs to be the correct amount and learning that humans have _hearts_ after looking at x-rays- growing one, to beat- the resonance cascade- Benrey is plummeting through void and it will eat him whole because this is death for something so keen on gaming survival for years- the death of a god- the resonance cascade and the halls of Black Mesa turning into an endless maze of fun with his friends- they don’t think that- they want to get out- he wants to get out with them- with them- his friends- his family-

Outside, because there is a world out there- and Benrey understands he does not care for it as a source of power, all he wants, and wants so _deeply_ with his entire chest, to the point of pain, is to go there with his family. Outside to where there’s sky and grass and all these other things Tommy’s talked about, all the things he’s seen in video games, wants to go out there and- he wants to experience emotion like he’s meant to- he realizes it’s been dull, so dull for years, but he wants it to sting and mean something, he wants that fast-paced happiness and love- anything that isn’t diluted-

Like the sorrow that stains his thoughts now, as he understands he is about to lose everything that makes him who he is-

He wants to feel with this same caliber- he’d gone years feeling the world in muted colors and laughing at things with his face but not his chest- he wants to feel _more_ and he wants those feelings to be _stronger_ because he caught a glimpse of it, in the exhilaration of taunting Gordon and in the ride or die arguments with Bubby- he’d started the week with only the aftertaste of feelings, only ever ironic only ever a joke, and he’s died with the most devastating flavor of love on his tongue.

And he is dying still.

The void rips away more memories- more hallways and more nights- never the one on shift but almost always awake, telling Gordon there’s nothing to fear- nothing in the hallway- watching him relax just that tad bit and holding his hand in strange midnight comradery. There’s nothing in the dark hallway. Benrey has better eyes- fine tuned for surviving even the worst nights-

-but the void is liquid in its blackness, even he can’t see through it.

By the time Benrey’s thoughts hit the last fight, he cannot remember who any of these people are. He can only hold the memory in his head before it is, too, taken away.

And from it he can garner a simple fact: he loves them. He loves them more than he’s ever loved anything. More than he’s ever felt a single emotion. And he wants to feel it more.

He holds on. When the void pulls, tries to rob him even of this, Benrey does not let go. It is the last thing he remembers- by which point, he has forgotten himself and his past and his own name, only wrangling the memory of his last moments from the void’s blank stare. This is his. They are his. He is theirs.

Benrey digs his fingers into the thought and cries-

Benrey has hands to hold onto this with. Benrey has eyes to cry from. Benrey is slowly coming to be. First he is bones, a skull that weeps for the overwhelming love of friendship, dry, bone hands that grapple for purchase in the stark nothingness of death. Then he is veins and muscle and fat and tissue and he is organs and he is _breathing_ and his heart is beating blood through his arteries and through his lungs, red hot blood, and he is real and he is Benrey because he remembers the name being shouted at him in that final fight.

Benrey wakes up.

Benrey wakes up mid-fall, rolling down a hill- he loses his helmet and a shoe but by the time he hits the bottom, he remembers everything. It has been given back to him. In exchange for something else, far less vital: the earned indestructibility of his evolution.

In simpler words: Benrey wakes up human.

It is a close approximation, he realizes, sitting at the bottom of the hill and threading his fingers through grass, feelings its cold strands and smelling the dirt he’s smudged in: he is a mockery of human people. His nails are still black and as he runs his tongue along his teeth, they are not what human ones felt like. But he is no longer god, he can tell, he is no longer eternal in his ability to adapt physically to a ridiculous extent. Benrey is stuck with what he’s got. Human-looking hands, not too much in the height department, black, matted hair, ribs, lungs, blood, a heart.

The grass is wonderful, and when Benrey looks up, he loses himself in the sky.

It catches his breath and unfolds and stretches forever and it is so piercingly blue, that he cannot look away. And then there are trees and they are so _alive_ and kind and he cannot explain why he thinks that but they _are,_ and the grass under his fingers is buzzing with the electricity of life, and there are dragonflies darting across his vision.

He lies back, staring at the clouds, aching where the roll has bruised him and aching deep within his chest where the beauty of the world has lodged its dagger and will never let him go.

Benrey breathes for a long, long time. And when he stands, his joints hurt and there is a faint taste of blood in his mouth where he bit his lip during the tumble. Benrey ditches his last remaining shoe and walks barefoot, knowing Black Mesa tiles and metal floors could never compete.

It takes two weeks of sleeping in open-all-night McDonaldses and public parks and trees for him to be discovered. 

In the end, Benrey is found by Sunkist. She drags Tommy by the leash like a hurricane, Bubby jogging not far behind and complaining all the way until his eyes fall on Benrey and he flicks through surprise, disbelief, intrigue, fear, and finally a sappy grin he tries to fight in quick succession. Tommy smothers Benrey in a hug and Bubby’s already calling Coomer, insulting Benrey every which way over the phone call, but ultimately patting his shoulder and calling him ‘brat’. And Benrey _feels._

On the ride to Tommy’s, it is a wonder Benrey does not cry. It is difficult to go from years of only the mildest, barely registered emotions, to an overwhelming wave of regret and grief and adoration.

Once there, Giovanni Coolatta levels him with an unreadable look for too long, but ultimately tips his head and says, “He is no… longer of my professional. Concern.” Before returning to his morning paper. Darnold comes up from the basement which Benrey can already tell houses a lab, pulling off gloves and goggles, before immediately brightening at the sight of their retrieved guest.

In short succession arrive Coomer and Gordon. On different cars and in different states of hastily dressed, and by now Benrey’s gathered that it’s been a year and a half since Black Mesa- the void does that to you- and everyone looks different.

Tommy looks more like his dad, but the warm yellow of his eyes is the same, and Bubby looks healthier, less deathly pale, carries himself like he’s gotten over some of his issues with love language. Gman looks the same. Albeit he’s wearing pajamas and drinking green tea. Darnold has a new tattoo that he tells Benrey glows in the dark, and his laugh lines are deeper. Coomer looks natural in a floral-print gaudy shirt and longer hair and new glasses.

Gordon just looks better altogether. A week of grime and stress underground wouldn’t do anyone good, even if back there he'd sometimes pulled off rather stunning sights with a gun and a spark in his eye. Now he’s lively, more awake, home-y somehow, with streaks of gray in his hair but little to no eyebags, a new prosthetic-

Benrey stares at it and remembers the arm. How did he think that was funny.

It is difficult to apologize through tears.

He tries to get as much of it out as he can, gesturing and flapping his hand, and this feels awfully like Xen again, words, words, words, and not knowing if they’re making sense because it’s _difficult_ getting all that into coherent, human, language, he’s blabbering.

He blabbers and they listen. He hopes he speaks clearly, and there is soft recognition in Gordon’s eyes. Tommy looks at him with warm hope mixed with mild confusion. Bubby’s eyes are wet even if he pretends this doesn’t concern him and Coomer’s gaze is the warmest it’s ever been. Benrey pleads, and he can finally say he loves them. After mulling it over so greatly, it helps. They hug him. They are warm and alive and even with a total of three metal arms in the pile, it is the softest hug Benrey’s ever received. He is at home.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me here on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/22ratonthestreet) where i also draw things i guess <:)


End file.
